The parent company of a Savannah area liquefied natural gas facility is planning a new 360-mile pipeline that will parallel the Savannah River and bring gas, diesel and ethanol from Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina to Savannah and Jacksonville, Fla., among other destinations.

Kinder Morgan’s new Palmetto Pipeline will hook up with existing pipelines to move 167,000 barrels a day of refined petroleum products from Baton Rouge, La.; Collins and Pascagoula, Miss.; and Belton, S.C., to North Augusta, Savannah; and Jacksonville.

A year ago, adding another child to their family wasn’t something Heidi and Chris Miller even dreamed about.

The Millers already had three children – a son and two daughters – and the busy lives that come with a big family and parents with full-time jobs. Adding to the family by adopting another child wasn’t part of their plans.

The following accounts were taken from Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident reports:

Man won’tfile charges

An Evans man said Monday he didn’t want to file charges against a man he said held him hostage for four days.

The 33-year-old man said that on Jan. 29, he went to the Wal-Mart on Wrightsboro Road in Augusta and was approached by an acquaintance. He allowed his acquaintance to ride with him to Kroger in Evans, where he was convinced to cash a $300 check at the Customer Service desk.

Columbia County’s school system is seeking to opt out of the state’s new requirement to pick one of three so-called “flexibility options” for system operations by the June deadline.

School board members have sent a resolution to Gov. Nathan Deal, the state Department of Education and the entire local legislative delegation advising them of their desire to “be granted flexibility without having to choose” one of the options required by state law by June 30.

Tax season is here and authorities expect con artists pretending to be from the IRS to try to steal people’s money or identities.

“The increasing number of people receiving these unsolicited calls from individuals who fraudulently claim to represent the IRS concerns us,” Columbia County sheriff’s Capt. Steve Morris said. “Particularly during the filing season, we want to make sure that innocent taxpayers are alert to this scam so they are not harmed by these criminals.”

Scammers often claim the victims owe money or are entitled to a huge refund.

A South Carolina woman was arrested early Tuesday after authorities say she ran from a traffic stop and rammed a patrol car.

Ashley Nicole Logue, 30, of Gloverville, was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, fleeing and attempting to elude, reckless driving, driving on a suspended license and driving on the wrong side of the road.

A Columbia County sheriff’s deputy tried to stop Logue on Washington Road in Evans at about 12:30 a.m. She didn’t stop and the deputy continued to follow her, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.

The hearing for the appeal of the state’s decision to award a license to Georgia Regents Medical Center to build a hospital in Columbia County won’t begin until June 22, much later than first anticipated.

University Hospital and Doctors Hospital of Augusta had also sought but were denied the required certificate of need to build the county’s first hospital and both are appealing by the Georgia Department of Community Health.